In late May 2001 I will finally escape California, moving to the city of Glasgow, in Scotland. One of the biggest pains with moving is telling all of your friends and acquaintences where you're going and what you're doing. To help in this I've put all the relevant information in this document. It's the logical successor to the Great Move FAQ, which described my move from Australia to the USA.
I'm moving to Glasgow, which is a large city on the western side of central Scotland.
17 March 2001
I'll be moving there with my long term girlfriend, Erica.
17 March 2001
Erica is going to be studying at the University of Glasgow. I will continue to work in my current position at Apple, putting the "world" into Worldwide Developer Technical Support.
17 March 2001
Erica and I have both wanted to leave California for years -- it's just too hectic, with too many cars and too much sun. Moreover, we both like the idea of living in the British isles for a while. Erica would have preferred Ireland, I would have preferred England, so we compromised on Scotland. We chose Glasgow because Erica liked the university and I liked the fact that there's enough high-tech industry there to keep me employed if my position with Apple doesn't work out.
Besides, for once in my life I want to live in a place where there isn't a water shortage! While I've lived my entire life (well, all that I can remember) in dry Mediterranean climates, I've always claimed to prefer CWAM (cold, wet, and miserable) and now I get test that claim.
17 March 2001
We're flying out of San Francisco on 30 May 2001; we'll arrive in Glasgow on the 31 May 2001.
17 March 2001
Hey, this bit hasn't change!
Developer Technical Support provides an answer-line service for third party developers creating products that work in conjunction with Apple products. The group I'm working with answers questions related to Macintosh networking, communications and hardware products. The basic idea is that third party developers pay for the privilege of emailing us complicated questions, which our group is responsible for answering. Normally they're relate to some tricky or undocumented part of the Macintosh system software or hardware. We are responsible for looking through the existing documentation or, if that's inadequate, talking with the responsible or looking in the source code.
A second aspect of the job is more pro-active in nature. If we find an area that is giving a lot of trouble we create further documentation (in the form of technotes) or sample code that addresses that area.
I've been working for DTS for the past five and a half years (since October 1995). It's been great fun!
17 March 2001
Our new snailmail address is:
2/R 32 Highburgh Road
Dowanhill
Glasgow G12 9EF
Scotland
UK
12 May 2001
There's a gallery of pictures of our new apartment here.
12 May 2001
My new phone numbers are:
Home/Work: +44 141 357 3173
Mobile: +44 785 549 1764
The following phone numbers are now obsolete:
+1 408 971 4451 (US home phone number)
+1 408 974 3044 (US work phone number)
+1 408 507 1856 (US mobile)
9 June 2001
My email addresses have not changed. You can get my personal email address from my main web page.
17 March 2001
No. Until recently the services in the quinn.echidna.id.au domain were being served by a machine in my apartment (DSL is a good thing). The domain name was being served by a machine in Australia, which resolved the names to an IP address in the US.
Right now I'm in the process of shutting down the DSL in my house, and thus my server machine will fall off the network. While I'm in transit to Scotland I'm redirecting my DNS to point to a friend's server (Peter Gontier), which will serve my web pages, FTP, and mail during the transition. After I get to Scotland I will set up a new DSL-based home network and set up my server on that network.
All this DNS manipulation is being handled by easyDNS, who offer a really cool service IMHO.
17 March 2001
It's an Australian monotreme (egg laying mammal), more commonly known as a "spiny ant eater". It's in my DNS name because of the way the ID domains work in Australia.
13 September 1995
e-kid-na
20 November 1995
I continue to do minimal maintenance on Internet Config for traditional Mac OS. However, all Mac OS X Internet Config development is being done by Apple.
17 March 2001
Just a few people. As I'll be working at home I won't get chance to meet people through work, so I'll have to try extra-hard to be sociable.
17 March 2001
My previous job was as a Programmer for the Department of Computer Science at The University of Western Australia. The work involved three tasks:
I worked for Computer Science for about five years, from August 1990 to 25 August 1995.
13 September 1995
Right now we have no plans for such a party. We're too busy trying to get things organised.
17 March 2001
Right now we have no plans for such a party.
17 March 2001
We've already sold our beloved BABYSHP (a Volkswagen New Beetle), so now we're driving Erica's mom's 1989 Honda Accord. It's old and had a hard life but, like the Energizer bunny, it keeps going and going. Erica and I share the car, so most days I commute to work by train or bicycle.
I would have loved to take the Beetle with us, and it certainly would have been cheaper to ship it than to sell it and buy a new car in Scotland, but getting used to the other side of the road will be hard enough without having to deal with being on the wrong side of the car. The concept of reverse parallel parking on the 'wrong' side of the road on the wrong side of the car was just too scary! Besides, at some point safety has to take priority over cost and sentimentality.
When we hit the ground in Glasgow we will rent a car for a month, primarily so that we can get around quickly while apartment hunting. After that we have to make a decision as to whether we want to buy a car. We probably will, but it's not guaranteed yet. After all, I'll be working at home and we want to live close enough to the university for Erica to walk there.
As to the new car choice, Erica wants to get a new Mini, but I have to drive one before I can commit to that. And seeing as they won't be released until July 2001, that's another reason to delay.
17 March 2001
The "Cupertino" mailing list is officially dead. I will set up something better once I'm established in Scotland.
17 March 2001
I'd like to thank the following people for their help with my move: Erica (of course!), Pete Gontier, and James and Saskia.
Share and Enjoy.
Quinn